Last time, I took a shovel to the proverbial burial ground that is non-readers reading habits and asked one simple question: why? What is it about books that has made it the one source of information that folks will happily admit to not engaging with?
While I came up with some theories - the nature of how we consume media is the big culprit rather than the swelling mass of it - the simple fact is that there as many possibilities to that question as there are non-readers on the planet. That is to say: loads. So what can be done? What, if anything, needs to change to make it a more widely-consumed medium, where people will gossip over developments in book series just as much as their favourite TV show or movie? Well, let’s take a step back first. To say people should read more is to imply that they don’t read enough right now. Which it’s blatantly not true: people probably read now more than they ever have done, but again, it’s all different. Rather than long prose, we’re talking news articles, Wikipedia pages and clickbait. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, but all of these kind of works are ‘reactive’ reading: one doesn’t actively seek them out. You stumble across them online via Facebook and reddit and the like. With other forms of media, we get a balance of this ‘reactive’ exposure with ‘proactive’ exposure. With TV and to a lesser extent movies it is now very easy to be casually surfing the internet until a link you see piques your interest and before you know it you’re hooked on a TV show. Yet at the same time it’s easier than ever to be picky about what we watch and listen to: we have immediate access to all TV shows, movies and music we could wish. We can proactively seek out what we want, rather than wait for it to come to us, thanks to the advent of things like Netflix, Amazon Fire TV and simply being able to record and watch your shows later. But where is this balance with books? A number of people may argue that they get sufficient reading out of articles and news online, but the problem there is that, while a lot of visual and audio media bears relation to one another – YouTube isn’t a million miles away from actual TV, and radio is still close to your own music collection – articles online are wildly different from books. The structure, the purpose, and approach to reading and enjoying, are so different as to be regarded as something else entirely. Where I’m going with this is that it would be nice to see more of these ‘reactive’ reading pieces bear closer resemblance to what you can find in a book. More short stories, more flash fiction, more sharing and exposure to these types of things. This can be a much more effective smooth step into full novels, and even if people don’t find the time or place to go that far then at least they’ve had some experience of fiction via reading or listening to it. It’s kind of what I try to do here, on the channel and on my website. Now, to all of this, you may be asking that first question again: why? Why is it so important to get more people reading? Again, I don’t want to sound patronising when I say all of this, and I’m not about to roll out the health and intellectual benefits to reading – we already know this the same way we all know that we should be eating five fruit and veg a day – it doesn’t say anything new and it doesn’t change anybody’s mind. My thoughts on the matter are quite simple: books themselves don’t need to change to differentiate themselves. The way we consume media now has meant that books have now become the brand apart, the entertainment form that’s just that little bit different. And that could be great way to get people to look at it. A great way books are different is the scale of immersion: a music album lasts about an hour. A movie can last about two hours. Video games can be much longer, but you can only really immerse yourself in them for short stints at a time, and the experience can get repetitive. Books are in a different league entirely: they can last hours upon hours, and always remain gripping. You can truly lose yourself in the world of a book and stay there for an extended period of time without it getting dull. Related to this is the fact that books demand your undivided attention. You can’t be reading while doing other things, not even listening to music. Other people find pleasure in listening to music while cooking, or skipping between video game and smartphone. Now, some people may find that frustrating – the last decade has taught us that we should always be multitasking, doing more than one thing at a time – so books demanding your complete attention my sound like a turn off. To that end, I say – see books as downtime. The time when we all want to be off the grid for a while, away from social media and our constant connections. And books give that respect back to you. What do I mean? Well, two things: because there’s this sense of ‘just me and the book’, it feels like you’re giving yourself more me-time as well, rather than running to catch up with everyone else. And as I mentioned last week, whereas it’s impossible to indulge in a TV show that few else know inside out and has been dissected and discussed to death, with books its much easier to pick up something more unknown, to keep the story to yourself. Look at Game of Thrones, for example. Prior to the TV series, you had just the books. Popular books, sure, but I guarantee that 95% of the TV audience had no idea what Game of Thrones was until the TV show started. Now, it is veritable empire of entertainment, complete with internet memes, discussion boards, famous quotes, video games…the list goes on. There’s a lot of great stuff that comes out of that, and more people have snapped up the novels as a result, but something gets lost in the process as well. You are simply not allowed to enjoy Game of Thrones as an individual anymore. You cannot avoid being wired into the web of media surrounding it. One loses that sense that they can take in a story, enjoy it, reflect upon it however they wish and leave it there. Everyone needs to make their voice heard on what they think you should be thinking. But with books, it is still easy to escape that. To find that solitude, to feel as though you’re the only person in the world to whom these books matter. I haven’t met anybody else who has read Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud, not even online. It really does feel like the book was just for me. Of course, that’s not true – that book is sitting on the shelves of thousands of people around the world – but it is very easy to retain that bubble of illusion, and it is a bubble well worth maintaining, for making these stories feel singular, personal and special. I cannot tell you what movies, TV and music I enjoyed in 2008, but I can easily tell you what I read back then. This is my idea of why books not only remain relevant, but can easily position themselves as something different to the manic consumption and sharing of media of today. Books as immersion, as escape, as being more personal and separate. Something I think non-readers can understand and appreciate. Books are just as exciting, fun, funny and thought-provoking than anything else they enjoy, with all the added benefits of that feeling that it’s just for you. And who doesn’t like that?
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It's fitting that I start off season 2 of Showcase with the same author that I started season 1 with: Jonathan Stroud. This time around, we are looking at his standalone novel, Heroes of the Valley.
I consumed the Bartimaeus Trilogy like a man starved: I had never known a story so gripping, thrilling, intruiging and downright funny all at once. Naturally, when they came to an end, I clamoured for more from this extraordinary, unbelieveably underrated author. I have Buried Fire and The Leap on my shelf, books that predate the Bartimaeus Trilogy, but I was most interested in seeing where Stroud would go after the fact. It was a long wait. 2005 to 2008, to be precise. What was taking so long? Was Mr. Stroud struggling with ideas, or just perfecting his creation no matter how long it took? It was impossible to tell. So when I finally got a copy of Heroes of the Valley in my hands, I was both excited and nervous about reading new material from Stroud. Well, it becomes quickly apparent that the answer to the previous question is, yes, he took his sweet time crafting it to perfection. At first, the book throws you off balance: it reads nothing like Stroud has ever written. The Bartimaeus Trilogy were busy, chatty adventures filled with events and colorful characters, but this standalone is something smaller, quiter, a bit more ponderous. There's an old-fashioned, sweeping epic quality to HotV that echoes similar fantasy epics in style, most notably Lord of the Rings. So whilst it certainly didn't feel like classic Stroud prose, it is nonetheless impressive, different and an indication of just how talented and flexible he is as an author. But it's not all new. What is classic Stroud here is just how criminally good the story and setting is. The world of the Valley is brilliantly realised in evocative prose that, for me, brought back memories of the time I hiked around the Lake District and Scotland: the stark beauty, the harsh weathers, the looming mountains. The settlements, Houses, farmlands and Valley-folk, too, give off the vibe of Scandinavia in the Iron Age - it's all fantastically evoked, you can almost smell the horse manure. But the real crux of where HotV will either fall or fly is in the story, and I'm safe to say it's as good, if not better, than anything he's produced, and believe me, that's saying something. The plot twists, turns, and leaves you guessing right up to it's climax, which is breathtaking, to say the least. You honestly have no idea where Stroud will lead you next. This is one of those precious stories that will have you squirming with delight as you cook up theories in your head as to why is going on, made all the better by the fact that the truth tops anything you came up with. All the thrills, scares and laughs that made his previous work so brilliant are all present and correct, yet maintain a feel of freshness, that this is it's own beast of a book in it's own right. And, of course, Halli is an anti-hero who is as complex as they come. This ain't no pretty boy Mary Sue who has strangers fawning at his feet, far from it. I dare you not to punch the air when he succeeds, as well as feel for him in his darker moments. HotV is precisely what I'd hoped for: which was, ironically, nothing like what I'd expected. It's everything a fan of Stroud (and downright awesome storytelling) could ask for, and yet is so different, layered and thought-provoking that you can see why it took so long to write. HotV isn't perfection: what is? One of the weaknesses of this story is that, As a standalone novel, it is tasked with beginning, developing and ending a fantasy epic in one go - not an easy task. HotV handles it amicably, but after you reach the back cover, you can't help but wish there were more to it, more pages or spreading it over a second book, to really get to grips with the numerous Houses and really beef up Halli's journey through the valley. But this is scarcely a complaint: if anything it's just one more thrilled Stroud reader who clamors for more. Thank you once again, Mr. Stroud, for taking me places beyond my dreams. "I don't read!"
How often do you hear that? Well, probably not that much if we’re being literal about it, but if you were to go out and do a quick survey of passers-by on the street and ask them these three questions: “What are you watching?”; “What are you playing?” and “What are you reading?” the vast majority of people will gleefully rattle off the latest TV show, movie or video game they’re currently digging, but when it comes to books don’t be surprised if many of them say they’re reading nothing or simply forgot you asked a third question as they got so worked up telling you how great Community or Dark Souls 3 is. Why is that? I sincerely don’t think that it’s a case that hectic lifestyles combined with instant access to social media, internet and entertainment as squeezing books back, though that’s certainly a factor. Nearly all forms of entertainment have benefited from the digital age, including books if we’re honest, but not nearly to the same degree of success that other media has. And I’m sorry, but the constant trumpeting of “hectic lifestyle! No free time!” is utter bunk. People only associate the shrinking of free time with themselves, not as a collective whole. And surprise surprise, people get older, move up in the workplace, start families and generally get busier. People may get a more hectic lifestyle as they move up their own personal ladders, but as a whole humankind has never had such a rich abundance of free time. We can now watch movies in cars, listen to music while walking from A to B, and play mobile games on the toilet. Don’t look at me like that, we’ve all done it. This is before we get into the real pure free time in evenings and weekends, when people will happily boast binge-watching whole seasons of Game of Thrones. And yet it’s very rare that you hear about binge-reading. Oh sure, reading sessions are long by nature and we’ve all heard people waxing lyrical about a book they couldn’t put down, and they read it from cover to cover in one go. But that brings me back to my first point: imagine a group of friends just talking, during a lunch hour. And, as these casual talks go, you tend to talk about the various media you’ve consumed recently, right? Now, it would be strange if one of your friends declared he hadn’t watched, played or listened to anything recently, wouldn’t it? You’d think that something was wrong. But if one of your friends said they hadn’t read a book recently, you’d probably consider that to be utterly normal. How has this happened? How has it become normal for reading to be such a sparse, even nonexistent activity? How have we come to this point where adults will quite happily tell you, without any hint of humor or shame, that the last book they read was “The Hungry Caterpillar” (which, even more depressingly, is not the actual title of the book)? Smarter people than me have tried to answer this conundrum, but I will throw in my two cents regardless. Which brings me on to my first point: reading books have always had this air of exclusivity to them. Reading is by nature a very individual, insulated experience. TVs movies and music can be enjoyed on mass, and in fact can amplify the enjoyment, but books are at their best when the the book and the reader are alone in a bubble. Plus, TV, movies, video games and music are largely expensive affairs, worked on by small armies of people who need to be paid, who may in turn feed families. They can't afford to be exclusive about what they do. They must throw their arms as wide open as they dare in order to put food on the table. Books, in that regard, have the luxury of not having that weight on them: they can afford to be a little more niche because only one or so people rely on it - if they rely on it at all, mind. Add to that the relative ease of putting a quality book together compared to what's needed to put a movie or TV show together, and you have the reasons why there's just so many books and authors out, way too many to keep up with, while its relatively easy to stay up to date with the biggest hits of the silver screen. And it's because of this that one can still walk into a commercial bookstore today and still pick up a book that, in the grand scheme of things, is obscure. At least, your friends and family have never heard of that book or that author anyway. It's this fact that still gives the act of reading a kind of aloofness, setting the reader apart from the masses...and yes, making one look a bit of a snob. No, there's no avoiding the fact that reading can come across to the average non-reader as a high brow past time. Look at it this way: we all know people who would've seen my decrying the fact that adults cite Eric Carle's magnum opus as latest and greatest read as sounding snobbish and elitist, and yet if I was concerned that a friend of mine who was in his 30s was genuinely arguing teletubbies as the greatest TV show of all time, the world would be on my side. Now I'm not here to talk about why reading has this air about it - perhaps that's for another time - but I am here to talk about the result that got us here. Because it wasn't always like this: you don't need to rewind that far back in time to when it was deemed unusual to not have a book going. You don't need me to tell you what has changed since then, but remember that the TV coexisted very happily with books for a long time. No, what's changed is how we consume or media, rather than the increased options. We don't need to sit through bits of TV we don't want to watch any more, we can just jump straight in! We don't need to sit through the filler tracks on an album any more or even fast forward, we can skip it! And we don't even need to wait until we get home to do any of this any more, it's all within reach by a device in our pockets! Now, I don't want to sound like a Luddite here - quite the opposite, I think the digital age has done uncountable good for mankind, and heck you're here drinking in my ramblings thanks to those changes - but we have definitely lost one thing in the transition. We don't put with filler any more. If our entertainment doesn't hit our sweet spot, we don't have to put up with it anymore: we just move on to something else. But in pre-digital age, you had to put up with the boring stuff - you couldn't jump around media like a bee collecting pollen, you had to put up with it. So on the whole, while this change in how we entertain ourselves has been for the better, we've lost a valuable skill: patience. That willingness to put up with something just that bit longer in case it starts to get good. Watching or listening to something you had no intention of watching or listening, but you have no other choice, and finding you actually really like it and thus expanding your horizons in ways you weren't expecting, rather than today where we can carefully craft our playlists and habits until we are surrounded only by the genres we presume to love. It's this change, this newfound taste for instant gratification, that is hurting people's desire to read, I think. Reading requires effort at the best of times, and heaps of patience. Usually that patience reaps rewards, in the form of a slow-burning but deeply satisfying read. But who has the patience or will for that? Again, I know I'm coming across as an old-fashioned grump when I say all this, but I don't say this out of blind favoritism or assuming books are automatically better. But books can be immense fun to read and worthwhile company, even if they don't reveal their wealth of joy as immediately or obviously as their other entertainment cousins. Next week, we'll continue to dig deeper into this conundrum, seeing what can be done to change this attitude...if anything. When eReaders first descended upon the market, I was highly suspicious of them. I saw them as gimmicky, as the book industry equivalent of 3D, and I railed about them in a long post about how they would never replace the printed book and how horrible they were.
That was about eight years ago. Now, I own an eReader and I adore it. The sea change in attitude I'll get to in a moment, but needless to say that my accusation that eReaders were gimmicky was far from the truth. Really, the eReader does for books what MP3 players did for music. Except...not quite. I still own and buy printed books. I'm not alone in this. In the past couple of years, eReaders and eBooks have hit an invisible ceiling in sales (or slowed at best), while printed books are enjoying a bounce back in popularity. Indeed, the vast majority of people who actively use eReaders still actively buy and read printed books. So why is that? I think it's safe to say that the digital era has resulted in many people not owning a single CD, or at best consigning their collection to a dusty attic because they don't have the heart to throw them away. Same is true for movies. And yet having a healthy-sized bookshelf around the house is still common. And lest we forget, books are big, bulky space-eaters compared to CDs and even DVDs. It seems the world has come to the same conclusion that I did: while eReaders do in fact have many advantages over their paper cousins, there is just no replacing the Real McCoy. Well, let's look at the advantages of the eReader first. They are many: They're the size of a book, but much thinner and lighter, but they can hold hundreds upon hundreds of novels. For portability' sake that is incredible: tossing an e-Reader into your suitcase or briefcase is tossing in a whole library of reading. E-readers also offer up other options such as increasing font size or font type - great for those with poor eyesight. Straight up eReaders don't have a backlight either, meaning they mimic the look of paper too, reducing eye strain to the point that it's basically no worse than an actual book. And if you have an eReader that also has other capabilities, such as the Amazon Kindle or even an eBook app on a smartphone or tablet, it makes for smooth integration into a hectic lifestyle, rather fumbling for a different device when you want to listen to music or answer messages. Pretty impressive stuff, overall. So with all of these advantages, why are sales in the printed book so robust? Well, with other mediums like music or movies, these are forms of entertainment which have always required an extra piece of equipment with which you enjoy it. Music went from vinyl player to CD player to MP3 player. Movies went from VHS player to DVD player to Blu-ray player. Basically, the advancement in technology didn't make consumption of the media any more or less complicated: there has always been that extra layer of equipment needed. Even now, with everything streamable and available with nothing more than an Internet connection, a device to play it on is still required. Not so with books. A book is a self-contained form of entertainment, requiring nothing more than itself to enjoy it. Okay, sure, we could get pedantic and say that working knowledge of the language is still needed, but that is also true of everything else in life. The fact is that you can walk into a bookstore right now, pick up a book and enjoy it straightaway. You don't need to plug it in to a player for that. For eReaders, however, you do have that extra layer. For all of the benefits that eReaders bring to the table, there's no getting around the fact that they do add an extra layer of complexity, a barrier between you and the book. Now you might be thinking, "It's not a big deal, having to boot up an eReader to read isn't that inconvenient." True. But think about it: when was the last time you had a piece of technology become widespread in usage despite being less convenient compared to its predecessor? This is the reason why HD TV is now widespread, and will soon be followed by 4K (because using a HD TV is just as easy as the TVs that preceded it), while 3D will never become widespread. Why? Because you need to put on a pair of special glasses. Just that little extra blip of extra inconvenience plays a massive part in the adoption rate of new tech and new mediums. We humans are hard wired to find the easiest, more streamlined route to results. Any extra detours to get there will either get ironed out or we'll give up on it altogether. And this is the main reason why eReaders won't be worrying brick and mortar bookstores any time soon. On top of this, the eReader may successfully mimic the look and feel of a real book, but there's no getting around the fact that it's an electronic device. It runs out of batteries sometimes, something a physical book never has to worry about. And if you drop a book in a bath, no big deal: just leave it to dry or at worst just spend a bit more money on a new copy. Annoying, sure, but nowhere near as annoying as dropping an eReader in the water and having to shell out for a brand new one for much higher price. And let's be perfectly honest here: we all just love the look and feel of a real book. They are precious things. The pleasing sensation of turning the page, the smell of new paper (or old, for that matter), is just something an eReader cannot replicate. And how can we treasure data files and pass on our beloved stories to our children when they don't physically exist? Don't get me wrong, I have long had my mind changed by eReaders, and they are wonderful, brilliant things. But the hardbacks and paperbacks are going nowhere. And why would we want them to? You can rip music and movies to a PC and save space in your record collection and movie library, but a bookshelf wouldn't be a bookshelf without books! I'm not saying anything new when I say that there are books that transcend age. We've all known for a long time that there are many excellent stories shelved in the children's section which can be placed in a discerning adult's lap and have an equally strong impact on them, perhaps even more so. I challenge anyone to argue that The Boy In Striped Pyjamas is just for kids.
I think this phenomenon can be split into two sub-categories. There are the books which are for all intents and purposes absolutely children's books that provide a sense of nostalgia and escapism for adults (which Harry Potter provides to an extent with its old-fashioned school setting), while the other type are the books which simply break down all feeble attempts at pigeon-holing to an audience and age range. Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver is one of the latter. Now, before I give the synopsis of this story, I will say that I'm about to mention some things that sound like spoilers, but in actual fact this happens right within the opening paragraphs. Still, you have been warned! Wolf Brother is set in the Stone Age some 6000 years ago, and tells the story of a young boy called Torak. He and his father were attacked by a bear (or is it?), which kills his father. Alone and terrified, Torak must fend for himself in the wild. But he soon befriends a wolf cub. Together they travel the land, learning about a growing and mysterious evil while being stalked by it. Wolf Brother might just be one of the most well-realized worlds of fiction I've ever read. It's clear from the get go that Paver researched this first hand, not just from secondhand sources, by the way she pulls on all of the senses in her writing. Evocations of smell, sounds, touch and taste occupy the world just as much as sights, bringing a sense of immersive sharpness to it all. Paver is also a very tight, taut author: no word is wasted or superfluous. Everything either advances plot, builds character or deepens the atmosphere. It makes for an intense, almost visceral read. It doesn't hurt that the story itself is absolutely cracking as well! But most impressive of all is the ingenious balancing act that Paver pulls off. This is clearly the Stone Age, right? But is it true-to-life Stone Age? Well, at first glance you'd say no: there's talk of magic and the supernaturial, after all. But is it real magic, or just superstition? Paver plays a balancing act by never really committing to either: it's down to the reader to interpret. Is that red moon really red? Or is it a lunar eclipse? It's up to you! And that's one of the finest hallmarks of a book that extends across the ages: this elbow room for the reader to decide what they think is happening and what it means. This multilayered writing is extremely tricky to pull off, but when it works it results in that magical kind of story that you can read as a child and as an adult and feel as though you have experienced two different stories. It is the sign of a highly skilled author, which Paver definitely is. Wolf Brother is an all around wonderful read, and the reasons to go and grab it right now are multiple. There are basically no reasons to avoid it...including how old you are. So last week, we looked at Stakes Creep. To summarize, it's that misled assumption that as a story progresses, everything must increase in spectacle, scope, and - yep - stakes in order to give the audience this impression that the narrative is progressing and tension is rising.
So now we know what stakes creep is how can we avoid it? What can we do to avoid that vacuous spiral of meaningless spectacle? Ah, well you see, that's the thing: there's nothing wrong with big spectacle and set pieces per se. The problem is when they are vacuous and lack any real heart. When was the last time you watched or read an epic battle sequence and felt any true sense of peril? If it was recent, then I am confident that it was quite a rare occurrence, no? The mistake that big spectacle and high stakes make is a misunderstanding in what the narrative assumes the audience cares about. Put it this way: imagine an empty building collapsing. Perhaps it was a demolition site or something. Can you picture it? Now, do you particularly care? Probably not. Sure, it might incite a few "ooh"s and "aah"s from you but that's about it. Basically, it's a vacuous spectacle. Now, imagine people in that collapsing building. How do you feel now? In terms of investing in the story emotionally, this now gives you some blips on the radar, because their are humans involved. It is no longer just blind spectacle but a very real danger to vulnerable people. Let's go one step further. Let's put some developed characters into that collapsing building. A single mother of two dashing back to her apartment to grab her newborn infant. The recluse suffering from PTSD after returning from a war zone. The elderly cripple who can barely move. Imagine you've spent some time in the company of these people already. The story has given you time to get to know these characters, to know their hopes and fears, what makes them tick, their morally grey areas... Now imagine them all in that building as it crumbles. Now we're fully invested in these characters as we fear for their lives, and we see their strengths and weaknesses come into play. You're probably already thinking of some of the ways in which these character's actions will play out as they scramble to survive. And I guarantee that, as you think about that, the whole concept of the collapsing building has faded into the background. This is the key point. This is the second reason that Stakes Creep tends to fail, which I didn't get around to in my previous post. It is assumption that the audience really cares about the spectacle, the fireworks, the explosions and flashing lights. Oh sure, it's fun and thrilling, but you don't actually CARE. What you care about are the characters mixed up in the midst of the chaos. They should be at the heart of the spectacle, and the focus must be firmly on them so that the spectacle forms a mere backdrop to their plight. Look to the movie 'Children of Men' as a stellar example of this. The torn-up war zone set piece at the end of the movie could've easily descended into another generic big climatic battle. Instead, watch as the camera remains firmly fixed on Theo for the entire duration. The peril is palpable, the empathy is real, and the spectacle and stakes surrounding him are true to the moment. But wait a minute, you might think: I can still think of plenty of movies and books where the spectacle is is still focused around a character but I still feel a complete lack of investment in their plight. Why? Well, that's because the story has given you no indication up to that point that it is willing to injure, harm or kill off characters. Think of the first Hobbit movie, as the heroes run from walkway to bridge to escape the goblins. Arrows and sharp debris fly in all directions, they fall into a chasm at terminal velocity and they all walk out without so much as a scratch. The Transformers movies and most hard-boiled action movies are like this. From the get go it is clear that the protagonists are going to survive the ordeal unscathed, so the narrative scrambles to throw faux peril at you, as if to say "Look, they really are in trouble! See, they now have a sexy scar on their cheek from that sword slash, they really can get hurt!" Which is of course nonsense. So you the audience watch these bloated sequences with all the investment of watching a fireworks display: pretty, but devoid of heart. Look to the battle of Helm's Deep for a masterclass of how it should be done. This is a battle where all of our major heroes survive. So what does it do differently? How does it make us care? Well, the peril doesn't need to be directly intertwined into the spectacle itself. It can implied, or established beforehand. Watch the buildup to the battle from the moment the first splashes of rain fall, clattering on armor. Strings play. Cut to women and children in the cave, terrified, clutching their loved ones. Aragorn walks between the elves with a pep talk. The Orc army stops short of the wall. Back to the cave. A baby's cry echoes through it. Aragorn steps out, beholding the Orc army with a grimace. The Orc army begins stamping. Aragorn draws his sword. Bows are drawn. Back to cave. The stamping rolls over them like earthquake. The first arrow flies. The Orc army charges. Theoden whispers: "so it begins..." Now if you're like me and you got goosebumps just thinking about that scene, then that is because this buildup establishes the heart and peril before the battle truly erupts. Who are the main players we care about? Why are they here? Why are they fighting? It's all made clear, and is devastatingly effective. Seeing the cut from the Orc army to the terrified women and children to Aragorn drawing his sword sears real, meaningful stakes where you feel a genuine concern for the welfare of your beloved characters and the ones they fight to protect. This results in the battle of Helm's Deep being a powerful set piece that has a real, visceral impact on the audience. The spectacle isn't just spectacle for its own sake: it is real and terrifying. And once again, the difference between a meaningful and vacuous battle comes down to effective use of characters. There is nothing wrong with high stakes and high spectacle, but we must understand that that is not what the audience truly cares about: that is mere window dressing. It is the characters that your audience will cling to and empathize with as the set pieces play out around them. Give your audience a reason to care about that character in that moment, and everything else will fall into place. Nostalgia is a weird thing. For those of you my age, we are now at that point where we can look back at the books, movies, TV shows and video games of our youth and reminisce about the good ol' days.
But here's an odd phenomenon: have you ever had your nostalgia glands stimulated by something that you never experienced as a child, but has so many hallmarks of your childhood that it might as well have been? That is exactly how I felt when I read Redwall by Brian Jacques. Redwall is the story of Matthias, a sweet-natured if clumsy mouse who is a helping hand around Redwall Abbey. A rat named Cluny the Scourge, leading his army of vermin, sets up camp nearby with every intention of invading the abbey and taking it for themselves. As the approaching battle builds, Matthias takes it upon himself to follow the trail of clues around the abbey that could lead to an ancient weapon supposedly hidden within the abbey, once owned by a legendary warrior. I read the whole of Redwall with a mix of delight and frustration. Delight because it is a fantastic and utterly charming read, and frustrated because I just knew it was the kind of book I'd have adored if I'd read it as a kid. As it was, I had to settle for enjoying it in my 20s, which frankly was more than enough. What makes Redwall work so well is the feel of it. It simply feels like one of the old-fashioned yarns, the kind of book you'd pickup secondhand for mere pennies at a car boot sale, the pages already yellowed from being read and reread twenty times, and you'd evade your homework to go and squirrel yourself away into a hidden corner of the back garden surrounded by the smell of grass and just while away the hours lost in a story. And it really does have that intangible quality of a bygone era about it, even if it was only written in the late 80s. The simplicity of 'good is good, bad is bad', the ever-so-slight air of well-intentioned preachiness to it, and the motley crew of quirky characters...if you have never read Redwall it will still feel like that well-thumbed book from your youth that you have long since forgotten. And because of that, what faults you could level at Redwall actually work in its favour. What's the scaling of the creatures here? We have a badger and a mouse talking, so is that to scale as in real life or are they the same size? Or how about the fact that the adventures of Matthias, while exciting and varied, are a little bit too episodic in nature and feel rather 'solved this challenge, now onto the next'? The answer to these kinds of questions is answered in the same straight way a child would: who cares? It's fun! Now you know me: in most circumstances this is the kind of detail I would want from my books, but Redwall pushes past the cynical adult and speaks to the inner child. We live in an age where, thanks to modern technology, old classics of all mediums from our youth that were once soon to be consigned to the void of hazy childhood memories are now safe and secure, easily accessible and given a new lease of life where it is unbelievably easy to indulge our inner child. But Redwall is a little different. More than just being a tale of yesteryear, it is an idea crystallized, capturing a certain precious atmosphere that would delight absolutely anybody. I mentioned this in passing last week, and when I did it occurred to me that Stakes Creep is actually a topic important enough to warrant its own entire post.
So what is Stakes Creep? It's not so much of a buzzword as it is a social phenomenon in the realms of storytelling, similar to the loudness wars of music. Incidentally, if you don't know what the loudness wars are, go and look it up, it's fascinating and it is in many respects the music industry equivalent of Stakes Creep. Anyway, Stakes Creep is the supposed need to elevate the stakes in a story, both within subsequent installments in a franchise as well as on a macro level across all stories, mediums and genres. More action, more adrenaline, more...well, everything. Was Part One about saving a loved one? Then Part Two will be about saving the town, and Part Three will be about saving the world. It's this assumption that a story's stakes must escalate in scope and increase the number of lives on the line in order to escalate the tension and sense of threat. Now, you don't need me to tell you that this is nonsense. Let's look at the Rambo movie series as an an example. Through Rambo one to four the kill count swells: it is 1, 12, 33 and 83 respectively. And yet Rotten Tomatoes scores put the movie scores at percentages of 87, 28, 36, 37. No correlation whatsoever: in fact Rambo - this poster boy of macho badassery - is most well received in the movie where he kills just one person. Look to at how the battles grow exponentially in Lord of the Rings movies: the battle of Minas Tirith is 10 times bigger than that of Helm's Deep, and while that battle is awesome many people still prefer the battle of Helm's Deep in terms of sheer impact. I could go on, but you get the point. You can probably think of some of your own examples of creeping stakes. But it's clear to see that bigger doesn't mean better, and it has been clear for a while now. This inflation of stakes without any real feel of true increase in impact on the audience doesn't just happen within the cycle of a single story but on a macro level as well. It seems that you cannot move these days for movies, TV shows and books where the stakes creep has been maxed out for so long that the danger is "The world is going to end!" half of the time. And we've become so desensitized to an impending apocalypse in fiction that I don't think any of us have felt a sense of fear or danger from it for a long time. And yet it we still find our stories reaching for this ultimate high stakes. So why? Why do we continue to insist that our fiction must have antagonistic forces that inflate a crisis far beyond the point where the stakes matter and to the point it becomes meaningless and ludicrous to the point it's actually detrimental? Of course, there's the simple explanation that Hollywood in general has always equated bigger with better. But I think it's more complicated and entrenched than that. Here's my theory: if you rewind several decades, by most accounts the villains in pop culture were absolutely undesirable. They were cruel, conniving, lacked any realistic features or humanity...and they were roundly trumped by the forces of good time and time again. Even if the bad guy was supernatural - be it an evil witch or dark overlord - the story is already preset to push a moral, and the villain will scarcely use their powers in their clash with the good guys, making them appear incompetent. The stakes were pretty low, from beginning to end, with the villain bungling and failing at every turn. The message of the day was clear: being the bad guy doesn't pay, isn't fun, and you will never be better than the forces of good. But then, as the world grew smaller and the last world war faded into memory, the enemies in our midst became less obvious, more difficult to put a face to or to pin down geographically. Who was good and bad in this new world order? Shades of grey started to appear. One man's terrorist, for example, is other man's freedom fighter. With this new and more complicated world, audiences wised up the fact that villains can actually be powerful, charismatic, have fun, be complicated...and outdo the protagonist. This is how we ended up with this swing in the balance of power. Antagonistic forces became increasingly powerful and omnipresent, to the point that they could even hold the fate of the world in their hands. The trouble is, this escalation to incredible stakes doesn't speak to us, for two reasons: first, as an audience we respond better to what we can relate to. The end of the world? A disaster of that magnitude is something that none of us have experience in, so there's no emotion invested in watching a CGI planet Earth burn, only empty spectacle. Now to this, you could argue that there are many excellent war movies out there where you are on the edge of your seat during the battle scenes, truly invested in what is happening, even though 90% of the audience have had no first hand experience of war. And you are right, absolutely. But why is that? Therein lies the key. Because talking about stakes creep is one thing, but having bigger stakes isn't the problem. The problem is what high stakes is mistaken for. And we're running out of time here, so it looks like this going to have to continue on in another post. Next week we'll cover the second failure of Stakes Creep, and take a look at the differences between these vacuous high stakes and meaningful high stakes, how you can avoid the former and aim for the latter. And don't worry, Part Two of this post won't feature any more explosions than this one! So we've talked about types of antagonists, how to make them meaningful and well-rounded, and how to make them understandable without being sympathetic. With that, you'd think we're all set to create the ultimate antagonist, right? Well, not yet. There's one more important thing to bear in mind. The fact that they shouldn't be, well...ultimate.
You see, so far the whole character build of the villain has been internal. In other words, creating the bad guy by thinking about the bad guy. But there is no doubting that the antagonist is defined by their relationship with the protagonist - a least in terms of how it serves the plot. The dynamic between these two forces basically defines your story. And the surest way to kill any potential tension and excitement? By making the skill, intelligence and power between the forces of good and evil completely unequal to the point of disbelief. There are two ways in which this can play out: when the antagonist is clearly far more powerful, smart and all around greater than the good guy, or when the antagonist is a gibbering mess that has absolutely nothing on the good guy. Let's start with the first type. Please don't mistake this with classic underdog stories: in all of those stories, sure the good guy may be out of his depth in a technical sense, but the gap between good and bad is not insurmountably huge. What the protagonist lacks in sheer skill she makes up in spirit and effort. And if it's a sports movie, plenty of training montages. But that's the thing: after going through trials and tribulations, the protagonist finally gets into a position where they have a fighting chance. Any victory to come will feel well-earned. But it's when that gap becomes too big that it ceases to be an underdog overcoming the odds and more about sheer luck and catching the all-powerful antagonist out on a fluke. The bigger that gap, the more you as the author will need to stretch to find that chink in the armor that brings down the nigh-invincible villain. And because the protagonist is then put into a position where they have to work to exploit a weakness, such victory feels poorly earned because it is not down to the protagonist's force of will and gumption, but rather using a kind of cheat to bring down the bad guy. In fact, it can even put the protagonist in a bad light, as this whole business of stooping to find a weak point and rip the bad guy apart with it is something many feel should be beneath a protagonist with a strong moral compass. And on the other end of the spectrum are the stories where villains are sniveling, hopeless fools who have ideas above their station and clearly no chance to achieve it. From the get go, it's immediately clear that the antagonist is going to fail - indeed, you often feel that even if the protagonist were completely absent, the antagonist would fail anyway because their plans would implode on their own accord, from classic reasons such as incompetent henchmen who bungle everything to simply not having the resources. It's true: how many stories have you known where the protagonist accidentally helped these antagonists out in a bank robbery or launching a missile? Of course the problem with this approach is immediately apparent: a victory for the protagonist is clear to see from the beginning, so why should the audience bother reading or watching on if there are no obstacles to overcome or tension to push against? An example that springs to mind is Mossflower by Brian Jacques: Tsarmina may seem to be a wicked and intelligent foe at first but she is thwarted time and again by nearly everyone she comes into contact with, even the lowly woodland folk. Her henchmen are beyond useless, and her lieutenant must've changed at least five times because they kept getting killed - in the space of this one book. And this leads on to another problem: we are hard-wired to feel sorry and sympathize with those who have it tough, and dislike anyone who exacerbates that. By the end of Mossflower I actually felt a bit sorry for Tsarmina, who had to put up with a staggering level of incompetence and grief. I swear she was suffering from PTSD by the end. On the flipside, this made the heroes, especially Martin the Warrior, seem self-righteous, pompous and cold by comparison. This kind of useless, bumbling antagonist who has absolutely no advantage on the protagonist whatsoever is quite an old-fashioned style, which is why the modern audience doesn't have as many examples of it to pull upon (Mossflower was published in 1988). The message was quite clear: being a villain doesn't pay, isn't fun, and has no redeeming features whatsoever. But over time we saw what I like to call 'Stakes Creep' (which I'll elaborate on next week), resulting in villains that are actually so insurmountable that defeating them is literally unbelievable. The simple fact is that the heroes should meet their match in the villain, not an unclimbable wall. Even if you do want to have an all-powerful antagonist, there should be at least a proxy that the heroes can be at odds with on a face-to-face basis and feel that they keep each other on their toes. In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, omni-powerful villain Lord Ruler is served by proxies in the form of Inquisitors, who aren't as powerful as the Lord Ruler but certainly give Kelsier, Vin and crew something to worry about. Protagonists and antagonists who can square up to one another and fight fair makes for a more honest and meaningful fight, and the end result more believable and satisfying. I promised way back at the reboot that I would be showcasing my books now and then, mixed in with others. Forgive me if this seems a little overindulgent, however unlike standard showcases which are more like reviews, showcases on my work are going to be more like retrospects where I take a magnifying glass to the story and try to assess it as honestly as possible. So let's get started, shall we? Today's showcase, then, is 'Tick' by P.J. Leonard. Tick really came about from two things: my unending love of cats and my admiration for Erin Hunter's Warriors series. It had always amazed me and dismayed me, too, when I would hear just how bad a reputation animal fiction had, especially that involving cats. For an industry of book lovers who are by definition trained to look past the surface layer and see the beating heart of the true themes of the messages beneath, this round critique of a wide-reaching sub genre that is rich with possibility seemed short-sighted at best. So when I set out to write Tick, not only did I actively want to put together an animal fiction story to prove a point, but I also made that one of the underlying themes of the story: that there is more than meets the eye. The other major theme is that of redemption: the loss of humanity and empathy through blind ambition, redeemed only when Tom literally loses his humanity and becomes a cat. This literal transformation, this stripping away of his material possessions and his ability to pursue his ambitions exposes him to a painful truth, of just how little compassion he has for others. This exposure to his selfishness is laid out very frankly at the beginning: the way he follows the signs with his name is representative of how he is interested in only following his path, without care for the consequences. When he reaches the end of the line, he is transformed into a cat. It dovetails in nicely with the old saying of "Curiosity killed the cat", except in this case it very much gave life to a cat. Does Tick provide an effective redemption story? Overall, yes, I believe so. Not as well as I'd liked, though: I'd say that I am 65% satisfied with the result. I do feel that Tom's growth as a character and the changes he goes through are believable and come from real incident as rather than out of nowhere. Looking back, though, I feel that one of the issues of Tick is that the plot kind of run aways with itself in the final third: the subplots swell to the point where I ended up creating extra viewpoints from the secondary characters so we could cover important developments that were out of Tom's vision. This, I feel, is where Tick is at its weakest. At the time, I reasoned with myself that the multiple viewpoints were like the ensemble style of The Lord of The Rings. However, there are some key differences: whereas the constant shifting of viewpoints in Lord of the Rings is not that jarring because all of the characters are working towards the same aim - defeating the evil of Sauron - in Tick the characters have very different motivations. Oh sure, Tom was as engaged in defeating Muezza as much as all the other clan cats, but the reason why is very different to, say, Tips, Twig, or Pipes. The jumping may enrich the world and expand the narrative scope of Tick, but ultimately the extended subplots and viewpoints were to the detriment of Tick overall Because it is Tom's story, and it was strongest when it stuck to the spine of that story. In the end, I still would declare Tick as a first novel I can be proud of. I set out to achieve something with Tick, and while it meandered its way there, using language that I will be the first to admit is rough around the edges at times, it got there, and like any good cat, it landed on its feet. |
Off the ShelfHere I share my ideas, musings and advice on the writing process. I also analyse some of my own writing for examples to show how I work. ShowcaseHere I will show off of some of my favorite good and great stories, gushing lovingly over why I adore them and why you should too. I will also show you the other side of the spectrum: bad examples of stories and what we can learn from them.
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